This invention relates generally to an analgesic composition which can be provided topically to provide relief from pain associated with joints and muscles.
Analgesic compositions are agents which relieve pain by acting centrally to elevate pain threshold without disturbing consciousness or altering other sensory modalities. There are numerous analgesic compositions on the market used to provide pain relief from a wide variety of disorders. These analgesics generally are administered parenterally, orally or topically. Although parenteral and oral analgesics typically have an advantage of getting the analgesic composition quickly into the blood stream of the subject to effect rapid pain relief, they also have problems in that, with parenteral administration, there is a requirement of asepsis at administration, the risk of tissue toxicity from local irritation, the real or psychological pain factor and the difficulty of correcting an error and, with oral administration, there is a problem that oral administrations do not always give rise to sufficiently high plasma concentrations to be effective, some drugs may be absorbed unpredictably or irradically, the patient may have an absorption malfunction and some drugs cannot be administered orally to patients with gastrointestinal intolerance or who have had gastrointestinal surgery.
Due to the problems outlined above, the topical administration of an analgesic composition is desirable in some situations. Topical administration is typically employed to deliver an analgesic composition at or immediately beneath the point of application. This route of administration has problems in that generally most of the drug that is absorbed through the epidermis diffuses into the circulation system resulting in inadequate levels of the drug being delivered to the desired treatment site. This necessitates that the topical composition contain the analgesic in an undesirably large concentration in order to assure adequate delivery of the analgesic to the treatment site. This can result in the topical analgesic composition being unnecessarily expensive and difficult to ascertain the therapeutically effective amount of the analgesic composition to be used in the treatment.
As is apparent from the above discussion, there is a need for a topical analgesic composition which is a xe2x80x9cnaturalxe2x80x9d substance, inexpensive and effective in providing relief from pain associated with muscle and joint disorders.
Boric acid is generally used as a very weak germicide which is applied topically and aqueous solutions of boric acid have been employed as an eye wash, mouth wash and for irrigation of the bladder. Boric acid also has been employed as a dusting powder, when diluted with inert material, but to date, there has been no disclosure of topically applying boric acid for its analgesic properties.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an analgesic composition which can be applied topically to relieve pain associated with muscle and joint disorders.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method of relieving pain associated with muscle and joint disorders.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by providing an analgesic composition comprising boric acid and a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier. The boric acid composition can be applied topically at or above the treatment site to provide pain relief to the patient.